Playbook: Equipment, Maintenance & Tech

The maintenance cost story in trucking has been quietly telling the truth about the freight recession in a way that spot rates and load volumes never fully captured. When freight slows down, trucks run fewer miles, which means fewer service events per truck per month. The Q4 2025 Decisiv/TMC Parts and Labor Service Benchmark Report […]

If you have spent any time in trucking Facebook groups, diesel forums, or on X this week, you have probably seen some version of this story: The EPA removed DEF requirements. The DOJ said deletes are legal. DPF is going away. The whole emissions system is getting scrapped. Trump said you can modify your truck. […]

The difference between what a driver should catch on the pre-trip and what a PM program should catch before the truck ever leaves the shop tells two completely different stories about where the failure lives

The deal is straightforward. Shell Rotella and Truck Parking Club are running a promotion called “Night on Us.” Drivers who get a qualifying Shell Rotella T5 Synthetic Blend or T6 Full Synthetic oil change — at a minimum of 11 gallons — at a participating service location can submit their receipt at rotella.com/nightonus and receive […]

If you are watching your shop bills, you may have noticed the fourth quarter of 2025 was slightly less brutal than the third. That is not an accident, and it is not because your trucks got more reliable. There is a real reason the numbers moved the way they did, and understanding that reason tells […]

A bill moving through the House of Representatives right now would establish the first federal framework for putting fully autonomous heavy-duty trucks on public roads. The SELF DRIVE Act of 2026 — formally H.R. 7390, introduced February 5 by Rep. Bob Latta of Ohio — is being framed by its supporters as a necessary step […]

Small carriers and owner operators are not just fighting market conditions. They’re fighting the messaging. Every week, from the moment a DOT number gets applied for to the day a carrier tries to scale beyond their first truck, there is a constant stream of outreach, advertising, promises, and pitches flooding in from every direction. Fuel […]

For decades, insurance was the one thing you couldn’t fake your way past to start a trucking company. That’s no longer true. As instant-issue coverage and $300 authority fees make it easier than ever to place 80,000 pounds on public highways without verification, a scalable, pre-authority risk-control model could restore the gate the industry lost without adding a single federal employee to the payroll.

My investigation found 76 Risk Retention Groups insure nearly 30,000 motor carriers linked to more than 6,300 fatal crashes, all without state guaranty fund protection for crash victims. The findings come as reports indicate that major insurers, including Chubb and AmTrust, are exiting the Chicago trucking market, funneling high-risk carriers into RRGs that have already incurred $199 million in unpaid losses and multiple insolvencies.

Less than 1% of insurer-carrier relationships are tied to 6% of the crashes and fatalities in America. The scorecard shows exactly who. The fix isn’t just regulation. It’s insurers taking ownership of their books and investing in risk-control professionals who actually know trucking.

GenLogs provides a visual, objective source of truth. You can put your eyes on what a carrier is actually doing: where they’ve been, when they last hauled freight, whether they ever hauled freight, and for whom. Instead of asking carriers what they claim to do, GenLogs shows you what they actually do.

When a driver or carrier challenges bad data through FMCSA’s DataQs system, the appeal often goes right back to the same officer who issued the violation. That’s about to change. The Motor Carrier Safety Screening Modernization Act finally brings independent review to the challenge process, and that’s the real game changer buried in this bill.

A viral dashcam video and a puzzling lawsuit showcase what the trucking industry has known for decades: Distraction kills, and for CDL holders, it kills careers too.

If you got an email from FMCSA this week telling you to prepare for Motus, you might have rolled your eyes. Another promise to modernize. We’ve heard this song before. This one actually matters.

The freight industry moved $14 trillion in goods last year. It cannot function without trust, trust that the carrier picking up your load is who they claim to be, trust that the broker paying you will actually pay, and trust that the load you accepted exists. That trust has been systematically exploited for decades. At its root, every form of freight fraud, chameleon carriers, double brokering, cargo theft, identity spoofing, comes down to one question: Are you who you say you are?

Dartanyan Gasanov, co-owner of Westfield Transport, is scheduled to stand trial on March 2, 2026, in Springfield, Massachusetts, on federal charges related to the June 2019 crash that killed seven Jarheads Motorcycle Club members. He reportedly rejected a no-time plea agreement and chose to fight the charges at trial. Meanwhile, the driver who killed seven people was acquitted, remains free under an immigration supervision order, and becomes eligible to petition for his license back in June 2026.

The conversation around Right to Repair has been floating around trucking for years, but it’s usually talked about in vague terms. More access. More fairness. More competition. What Owner-Operator Independent Drivers Association (OOIDA) is pushing for right now is much more specific — and much more urgent. At its core, this is about who controls […]

A five-year-old Maine boy was dragged nearly 300 feet and run over by his own school bus after his arm became trapped in the closing doors. The NTSB investigation comes as national data shows approximately 16 children die annually in school bus loading zones, a number that has persisted for decades despite available technology to prevent such tragedies.

A 35-year-old Mexican national working for an Arizona-based trucking company was arrested at the border after allegedly targeting middle school girls and multiple women during a single night in Ellensburg, Washington. The case fits a disturbing pattern the FBI has tracked since 2004 through its Highway Serial Killings Initiative, which has linked more than 850 murders to long-haul truck drivers and currently tracks 450 active suspects.

Starting January 1, 2027, new heavy-duty diesel engines will hit the road. And when engines change, oil has to change with them. That’s the entire story. Under upcoming EPA regulations, heavy-duty diesel engines must achieve significant emissions reductions: an 80% decrease in nitrogen oxides (NOx) and a 50% cut in particulate matter. Furthermore, these rules […]